Kalina Ann
by Bustahead
Summary: I think the title speaks for itself. Want to find out more? Then click the title...written in a moment of extreme depressiveness.


**Kalina Ann**

_I miss her so much. She was the only person who I could ever bring myself to love fully and freely. She used to tell me all kinds of stories, and she used to spend nearly all of her time with me. I remember how I often pretended to be her, pretending to shop around the stores, pretending to be a perfect mother. Because that's what she was to me. _

_Perfection._

_Then she fell ill._

_At first, I didn't realize that it was my father who was behind it all. Constantly draining her power and her strength into his own body, taking it for himself. Even when I was a child, I always sensed that my mother and…father's marriage had never been a happy one. They were distant. Father would work long long hours but when he came home, mother's face would turn pale, and she became something that was alien and unfamiliar to me. She wasn't pretty anymore. She was like a ghost._

_Fathe- I mean…Arkham rarely came home, but when he did the two barely spoke words towards each other. Mother would lock herself in her own separate room, and I would be left to my own devices. Whenever Arkham came home, I knew that it meant mother would no longer play with me._

_As time went on, I was invited to a friend's house. Her father was kind and doting, her mother loving and constantly laughing. I watched her parents carefully when they were together, and their behaviour changed, but it became much more tender. And that was when I knew._

_Something was not right in my house. Something was not right at all. I thought that it was perfectly normal, but now that I had a taste of normality I wanted more of it. I craved it, and it became like a hunger that would never be filled. _

_Then as time passed, mother grew worse and worse and the look in father's eyes was becoming darker and darker. I could no longer look him in the face without feeling shivers run up and down my spine. I was scared. Of him. He terrified me._

_Soon, my mother could no longer rise and get out of bed. She was too exhausted, she could barely raise her hand to wave me goodbye as I left the house to go to school. Father stayed at home more and more often, and every night there was some kind of argument as to who was going to pay the bills. It seemed as though he had been fired for reasons such as "poor concentration" and "odd, unsettling behaviour"._

_I didn't think anything odd about this. At that age I had already grown to dislike him. I secretly wondered to myself why it was he hadn't been fired sooner. If his own daughter couldn't get on with him, then why would someone else be able to? Indeed, why should someone else be able?_

_Then one day, he sat me down, and told me a vivid wild tale about a warrior called Sparda, about the legend that surrounded this enigmatic legendary knight. I had wondered to myself why he was telling me all this, and why he chose now of all days to try and gain a bond with his sixteen year old daughter._

_Then the next day, the week before my seventeenth birthday, my mother beckoned me into her room. I remember thinking that it smelt of sickness, and of something else that I just couldn't place. I understood what it was later. She told me to sit down on the side of her bed. I did. She told me to come closer. I did. She kissed me tenderly on the cheek, and I smiled. I remember thinking that it had been a long time since I had done so._

_'Do you remember how I used to tell you all these stories when I was younger, Mary?' she whispered. I smiled and nodded silently. She coughed painfully, and swallowed hard before continuing. 'Would you like to hear one more?'_

_'Mother…'_

_'Ssh…I know, I know…you're too big for fairy tales. You're growing up.' She looked at me fondly. 'Someday, you'll make someone very happy, Mary. I love you.' I felt tears rise to my eyes, I felt a lump come into my throat, threatening to choke me._

_'I love you too…'_

_'Let me tell you this last story.'_

_I remember thinking that I didn't like the sound of that. But my mother was sick, who was I to deny her? I just wanted her well again, and if telling the story would make her feel better, then I was going to let her tell it._

_The story she told me was amazing, for it was all true. It was about her._

_It was about power, courage, wisdom and sacrifice. A terrible tale, yet fascinating to listen to. It took her a week to finish her story, and I sat enraptured for that week. My mother's eyes became bright and alive as she retold her adventures, how she met friends and how they eventually left her._

_She finished the day before my seventeenth birthday and that was the day when she smiled at me, and managed to find the strength to get out of bed, to hobble painfully towards her closet, to reveal to me a secret opening behind it. She pulled out a dusty box, and the weight of it amazed me. Inside the box, lay a beautiful weapon, awesome and deadly. I was struck by its lethalness._

_'Happy Birthday, Mary, my little Lady.'_

_On my seventeenth birthday, she died, leaving me only with her story and with her last words._

_But now I grow old, and I refuse to let my mother's tale die when I do._

_Now I tell you my mother's story, in the hopes that it will live on, for ever._


End file.
